Biography

Michael Hiltner came to prominence at the 1959 Tour du St. Laurent in Canada, winning four of the 10 stages, and the GC. After the 1960 Roma Olympics, Hiltner stayed in Italy with Lars Zebroski, basing themselves in Firenze (Florence) and riding for an Italian amateur team. Hiltner won four races in Toscano in 1961, a criterium in March and hilly road races in April, July, and August. He was not picked up by any Italian pro teams, and later rode for the US at the 1961 and 1962 World Championships, and the 1963 Pan American Games where he won a silver medal in the team road race (with Robert Tetzlaff and the non-Olympian Robert Parson). In 1965 he won the first true US Championship in a road race, and also won the US hill climb title that year on Mount Evans in Colorado. He qualified for the Worlds in Spain and he and his Brazilian wife stayed in Europe where he raced thru 1967. In 1975 Hiltner set a record a double transcontinental crossing of 36 days and 8 hours, riding from Santa Monica to Atlantic City and back. Working by then mainly as a clothing and coin art designer, he also designed mountain bikes, and would eventually change his name to Victor Vincente of America. Hiltner was inducted into the US Bicycling Hall of Fame in 2001.

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